“My dreams are a very active part of my life,” Annandale English instructor Raymond Orkwis said, right after stressing the importance of strict realism in life-planning essays. Orkwis’ outlet for those dreams is poetry, occasionally published, sometimes heard in coffee-houses, and usually, as he says, “surreal.”

NOVA’s Manassas campus celebrated National Chemistry Week with a student-friendly display in Colgan Hall from Oct. 19 through Oct. 23. Colorful-molecular models and an Erlenmeyer flask with a lime-green solution sat underneath posters about the use of chemistry in detecting counterfeit bills and preventing sunburns. At the edge of the table, a small glass display showed differences in atomic size and ionic size for several elements. Other displays showed differences in color in various lead compounds and the molecular makeup of a variety of crystals.
Students celebrated Halloween along with Chemistry Week by taking a Tootsie Roll from the plastic jack-o-lantern on the table. Then they could select a beginner-level quiz from a folder on the table and submit it for a chance at a prize.

Six Degrees of Separation had its opening night on Friday, October 9, at NOVA Loudon’s Waddell Theater. The house was packed, the laughs were plenty and the actors, who could be heard even in the back of the theatre, made the unusual transition from addressing the audience to addressing each other without a hitch.

The play, directed by Haley Murphy and produced by Colleen Stock for CCT with 2nd Flight Theatre Company, deals with imagination in art, in lies, in self-identity and in hope.

For the actors and crew of the Nova Woodbridge Theatre Group, Arthur Miller’s 1947 classic, All My Sons, is a work in progress. They had only reached their third rehearsal as of September 17, so the actors, with scripts still in hand, performed in a phase between reading and acting, moving through an approximation of what will, in mid-November, be the final set.
Professor Eric Trumbull, who teaches acting and theatre workshops at Nova Woodbridge, gave them time to get used to the words and the play, all the while …

At NOVA’s Loudoun campus, student-based theater and community theater have combined for a modernized version of John Guare’s 1990 play, Six Degrees of Separation. The play centers around the way a gay con man — who is also a sensitive, moving speaker — affects the wealthy Kittredge family in New York.